“But,” here the Superintendent interrupted himself as if, carried on by his tale, he had gone too far, or as if at least it were possible that he had gone too far, “Doesn’t the story bore you?”
“No,” said K., “it amuses me.”
Thereupon the Superintendent said: “I’m not telling it to amuse you.”
“It only amuses me,” said K., “because it gives me an insight into the ludicrous bungling which in certain circumstances may decide the life of a human being.”
“You haven’t been given any insight into that yet,” replied the Superintendent gravely, “and I can go on with my story. Naturally Sordini was not satisfied with our reply. I admire the man, although he is a plague to me. He literally distrusts everyone; even if, for instance, he has come to know somebody, through countless circumstances, as the most reliable man in the world, he distrusts him as soon as fresh circumstances arise, as if he didn’t want to know him, or rather as if he wanted to know that he was a scoundrel. I consider that right and proper, an official must behave like that; unfortunately with my nature I can’t follow out this principle; you see yourself how frank I am with you, a stranger, about those things, I can’t act in any other way. But Sordini, on the contrary, was seized by suspicion when he read our reply. Now a huge correspondence began to grow. Sordini enquired how I had suddenly recalled that a Land Surveyor shouldn’t be summoned. I replied, drawing in Mizzi’s splendid memory, that the first suggestion had come from the chancellory itself (but that it had come from a different department we had of course forgotten long before this). Sordini countered: ‘Why had I only mentioned this official order now?’ I replied: ‘because I had just remembered it.’ Sordini: ‘That was very extraordinary.’ Myself: ‘It was not in the least extraordinary in such a long-drawn-out business.’ Sordini: ‘Yes it was extraordinary, for the order that I remembered didn’t exist.’ Myself: ‘Of course it didn’t exist, for the whole document had gone a-missing.’ Sordini: ‘But there must be a memorandum extant relating to this first communication, and there wasn’t one extant.’ That drew me up, for that an error should happen in Sordini’s department I neither dared to maintain nor to believe. Perhaps, my dear Land Surveyor, you’ll make the reproach against Sordini in your mind, that in consideration of my assertion he should have been moved at least to make enquiries in the other departments about the affair, But that is just what would have been wrong; I don’t want any blame to attach to this man, no, not even in your thoughts. It’s a working principle of the Head Bureau that the very possibility of error must be ruled out of account. This ground principle is justified by the consummate organisation of the whole authority, and it is necessary if the maximum speed in transacting business is to be attained. So it wasn’t within Sordini’s power to make enquiries in other departments, besides they simply wouldn’t have answered, because they would have guessed at once that it was a case of hunting out a possible error.”
“Allow me, Superintendent, to interrupt you with a question,” said K. “Did you not mention once before a Control Authority? From your description the whole economy is one that would rouse one’s apprehensions if one could imagine the control failing.”
“You’re very strict,” said the Superintendent, “but multiply your strictness a thousand times and it would still be nothing compared with the strictness which the Authority imposes on itself. Only a total stranger could ask a question like yours. Is there a Control Authority? There are only control authorities. Frankly it isn’t their function to hunt out errors in the vulgar sense, for errors don’t happen, and even when once in a while an error does happen, as in your case, who can say finally that it’s an error?”
“This is news indeed!” cried K.
“It’s very old news to me,” said the Superintendent. “Not unlike yourself I’m convinced that an error has occurred, and as a result Sordini is quite ill with despair, and the first Control Officials, whom we have to thank for discovering the source of error, recognise that there is an error. But who can guarantee that the second Control Officials will decide in the same way and the third lot and all the others?”
“That may be,” said K. “I would much rather not mix in these speculations yet, besides this is the first mention I’ve heard of those Control Officials and naturally I can’t understand them yet. But I fancy that two things must be distinguished here: firstly, what is transacted in the offices and can be construed again officially this way or that, and secondly, my own actual person, me myself, situated outside of the offices and threatened by their encroachments, which are so meaningless that I can’t even yet believe in the seriousness of the danger. The first evidently is covered by what you, Superintendent, tell me in
